AN-UN LHUANG - CHINESE RHAPSODY N ° 2: PRELUDE AND DANCE

This is one of the focal points of the wide-ranging studium project proposed in Pordenone during the 2013-14 Season. The study is understood as the evolution of different musical genres: the Preludes and Exercises by Clementi, for example, in the middle of the eighteenth century acted as an alter ego to Bach’s Preludes and Fugues intended as a study of new musical forms and syntax, not just mechanism studies. Nowadays, contemporary music is not only represented by pop or rock, but also by the art music which is expressed, according to the various geographical origins, in different grammatical forms and languages. Here, the Chinese pentatonic scale merges with Western language without ever losing its typically Eastern identity.

ENRIQUE GRANADOS - DANZA SPAGNOLA N ° 2 "ORIENTALE"

An encore in the form of dance: another example of how a dance can become a melodic study. If in the Bach’s Suites for cello only the dances were real studies aimed at advancing the new cellist, the more modern dances can group together color studies (?) merged in the form of study. In this dance, the xenophilia towards the East act as a matrix of experimentation of new timbres: the study of color and sensory perception of an unknown geography.

FRANCOIDS MOREL - DEUX ETUDES DE SONORITE
Great examples of post symbolism: if France, with Claude Debussy, seals its supremacy in the field of innovation of the science of harmony, there are many examples in the twentieth century and the contemporaneity in which sound is in itself the creative matrix of various compositions. For Olivier Messiaen, for example, rhythm was the main source of metric and poetic innovation in piano literature (études de rythme). Morel is placed in a dimension of ingenious sound innovation, almost being able to suggest constructive changes to the new pianos that can now guarantee quality and depth of sound that are difficult to overcome.
LIUYANG RIVER - HUNDREDS OF BIRDS PRAISE THE PHOENIX
New example of music language detached from the Western one. China with its present-day music offers us two didactic and descriptive studies of Chinese natural landscapes: a river, with the movement of water, and an admired quote to Olivier Messiaen, a great expert in ornithology, with the Study entitled "Hundreds of Birds praise the Phoenix". A mixture of archaism, oriental spirituality and great piano wisdom: Wang occupies a place of merit in the Chinese musical avant-garde. Even using musical grammars extraneous to ours, the Studies of Chinese origin imitate the transcendental dimension of Liszt, in which the sensory evocations of the sound that spring in execution overcome the purely technical difficulty.

MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN -STUDIO N = 6: PIANO EXERCISE (homage to Domenico Scarlatti) -STUDIO N ° 3: FROM PAGANINI - LISZT
Marc-André Hamelin is probably the greatest juggler here present and the homage to the Italian spirit of Domenico Scarlatti and Nicolò Paganini is an undertaking worthy of courage and risk-taking, in an almost circus sense. Referring to Scarlatti experimenter of Studies with the harpsichord, at the beginning of this brief listening guide, a pure and simple cue of curiosity was given to imagine how much the concept of virtuosity was linked to that of amazement and wonder already in the eighteenth century: the transcription of Hamelin proved it
The paganinian approach to the concept of virtuosity was different: Paganini was so astonishing from the point of view of the technical spectacularity that he soon fed various legends about his own, often obscure existence. The famous "pact with the devil" that he was said to have stipulated in exchange for an unparalleled/unmatched technical ability at the violin costed the Genoese "funambulist" even the burial in Christian land. Franz Liszt, subjugated by so much skill, became his piano alter ego. Hamelin, today , starts from the principle of Lisztian reworking, and not from the simple transcription, and adds all his own abilities as a magician at the piano.
G . GERSHWIN - l' VE GOT RYTHM !
The encore of this ? is a best seller by George Gershwin: study on rhythm, in the true sense of the word. Original for solo piano, this short and famous piece/track soon became a sung melody. Innovation and experimentation: with his own language Gershwin demonstrated what could, in the New World, be written for the piano outside the traditionally European languages. A prelude to the jazz seen as a study of form, study of rhythm, study of the onomatopoeic imitation of noises from a new civilization full of horns, skyscrapers, well-being and urban expansion.

ERWIN SCHULHOFF - CINQ ETUDES DE JAZZ
If jazz is to all intents and purposes contemporary music, in this case we are talking about historical jazz, in which the study of the rhythm intended in the classical sense crosses over into a new typically jazz language. Operation necessary today to break down the barriers that ghettoize individual musical genres, Schulhoff's was, in the first half of the twentieth century, the first tangible proof that jazz would become a fundamental part of twentieth century music. Today, therefore, we can affirm that jazz is an essential current of contemporary music. In this case, the five studies are written in full, but a great space is left to the interpreter for agogic, timbral and dynamic improvisation, a space that is increasingly necessary to recover even in the so-called classical music

PUI-FUN-CHAN - AUTUMN MOON OVER THE CALM LAKE
Autumn Moon Over the Calm Lake is a Chinese folk song, inspired in the thirties by a visit to the Hangzhou’s West Lake : the music well describes the peaceful serenity of the place, considered a wonderful scenery of nature since ancient times. This piano transcription is well known and is a part of the repertoire of many Chinese pianists.

WANGHUA CHU - XINJIANG CAPRICCIO
This collection of atypical Studies, according to the fil rouge that binds the thematic concept of the Hong Kong Marathon, ends with a new example of contemporary Chinese music, demonstrating the fact that the piano repertoire, in the Five Continents, must not stop at the geographic borders, nor to those marked by lazy listening habits based only on tradition. A Capriccio, in reality, of a brilliant and virtuosic character, in which the studium form evokes the sublime invention of the Studio do Concert by Franz Liszt.
A piece/track of great gestural spectacularity, as well as complex execution, testifying the fact that music is a constantly evolving language, even in the pure sense of the conception of a concert in a visual and not only auditory sense.